Azure Updates: Container registry; Automation; HANA data protection

The new year began with continued disruptions due to the pandemic, including new rounds of closures and lockdowns in many places. Nonetheless, with vaccines now available many are hopeful for a burgeoning economy and a slow but steady return to normal in the months ahead.

Microsoft issued only a few updates related to Azure in the early days of January,  reflecting the holiday atmosphere, as workers, users and partners across the globe take stock of the changes we've witnessed and where the cloud is headed next.

Among general updates, Microsoft issued the public preview of Azure Container Registry across Availability Zones. Azure Automation is available in the Germany West Central region, helping customers to deploy, monitor and orchestrate resources. The Azure team announced the public preview of Application Consistent Snapshot tool (AzAcSnap), a command line tool to streamline data protection for third-party databases SAP HANA across Linux environments, such as those running SUSE and RHEL.

StateScoop reports that the North Dakota government is turning to professionals in Latvia, one of the last countries where mainframe skills are still taught to junior engineers, to migrate its mainframes to Azure. IBM is taking steps to compete with Microsoft's hybrid cloud initiatives, acquiring Finnish cloud startup Nordcloud.

Eric Savitz, writing for Barron's, looked back at an important year for Microsoft's growth. Stock prices climbed ...